5 Reasons to Attend the 5th English for Healthcare Conference: Reason 3

After a 3-year break from face-to-face events, the entire EALTHY team together with our Serbian partners ate hugely looking forward to welcoming you at the 5th English for Healthcare Conference hosted by the Faculty of Medicine and School of Dental Medicine, University of Belgrade, Serbia. The conference takes place on 16th and 17th September. We´re publishing five excellent reasons for joining us. Here is reason number 3.

REASON 3: Two very different but equally compelling plenaries

Friday sees the conference kick-off a fascinating plenary from Kevin Harvey, Associate Professor in Sociolinguistics at the University of Nottingham in the UK. Kevin´s work includes research into interdisciplinary approaches to professional communication, with a special emphasis on health communication.

His talk, Depicting Dementia: A Critical Examination of Discourses of Ageing and Cognitive Decline in the Popular Media, examines how dementia is presented in mass media and the consequences that has for those affected.

“I present a critical analysis of the discourse of ageing and cognitive decline in the mass media, exposing some of the often taken for granted beliefs and assumptions at work in popular depictions of ageing. I argue that much media reporting, particularly that of the press, often depicts older people in objectifying and de-humanizing terms, trading on emotive metaphors and reductive language and imagery. One consequence of such reductive portrayals is that any notion of the whole person is excluded, along with any sense living well with dementia.”

Given the rapidly rising numbers of cases of dementia worldwide, his talk is of tremendous significance and highlights the challenges facing those working with dementia patients, their families and the wider communities where they live.

Saturday follows with a very different focus from SLC co-founder and managing director, Chris Moore. His talk, Research: Improving the National Provision of Nursing English in Indonesia, presents the results of a 2022 research project on Nursing English across Indonesia.

Indonesia is an ambitious and rapidly growing industrialising country looking to create an internationally recognised healthcare system. As a part of this, the Indonesia Ministry of Health and the British Embassy in Jakarta commissioned SLC to analyse the provision of Nursing English – from objectives to curriculum design, material provision, teaching, and professional development.

The plenary describes the methodology, the challenges faced, the results, and the recommendations made in order to achieve the ambitions of the Ministry.

“The results give insight into the challenges of designing and implementing an ambitious nationwide Nursing English programme and inherent tensions between what happens at Ministry level on one hand and in practice across very differentiated contexts on the other”

What the research uncovered is undoubtedly not unique to Indonesia. During this presentation, the audience will be able to reflect on how these apply to the contexts they work in.

Read more: https://www.englishforhealthcare.com/speakers